Russia on the rise

Russia on the rise

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Towers of colour: the 450-year-old St Basil’s Cathedral remains one of Moscow’s most iconic landmarks

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Glitzy touch: the Ritz-Carlton has a rooftop bar with Fabergé egg-style chairs

Towers of colour: the 450-year-old St Basil’s Cathedral remains one of Moscow’s most iconic landmarks

Moscow is barely a three-hour flight from London yet it can feel like years away. Spring is already here in the UK but Russia is still deep in winter.

On the way from Domodedovo airport, as the snow flutters down, I pass forests of trees bent double by the snow and grim, grey tower blocks lining the way. Then I catch a sudden flash of a white Russian Orthodox church with a gleaming gold onion dome — a defining feature of Russian ecclesiastical architecture.

The traffic is terrible and all the cars are filthy from splashes from the melting snow. But the weather can also be a great leveller, as glamorous white Audis look as scruffy as the odd beaten-up green Lada. I can’t imagine Russia any way other than covered in snow.

When you first touch down on new soil you find yourself scrutinising everything — buildings, billboards, people. It’s something of a stereotype but women here do seem to be either haughtily glamorous — unashamedly wearing fur coats — with high heels in the snow, or else short and stout with faces barely visible from behind deep hoods. For men, the rule seems to be hoods for youth and fur hats for the older. A contrast to multi-racial, multi-styled London.

Collecting me is my guide, sturdy, dark-haired Olga, who is frustratingly tight-lipped when asked about the elections taking place that very day but redeems herself with self-deprecating humour when describing the ethnicity of the Russian people — “Just look at me,” she smiles. She drops me at the Ritz-Carlton, on Tverskaya, adjacent to Red Square (the Russian word for red also means beautiful — not a reference to communism or bloodshed as is commonly believed). No hotel could wish to find a better site, which is the only thing they kept from the former Intourist hotel, a sleazy, budget Soviet-era operation which was rebuilt and re-opened in 2007.

Now it is opulent by any standards, in keeping with Russia’s new excess. The Ritz-Carlton has a marble-floored lobby with black columns and dark cherry wood-furnished rooms with silk-trimmed, cushion-piled bedspreads. The Presidential Suite — graced by Barack Obama and Tom Cruise — has a bullet-proof dining room. The overall style is too heavy for my taste but who’s complaining about such luxury when it’s minus nine outside? Money talks in Moscow — that might explain why BA has introduced First and Club World service to what is essentially a short-haul, no-frills flight from London.

The top-floor 02 bar, accessed via its own bubble lift, is the hotel’s nod to the future, with its angular glass roof and seats designed like futuristic Fabergé eggs. It serves sushi, of all things — and good sushi at that. It also provides the best views of people crowding the streets on election night (and demonstrating the day after).

The next day, I open my curtains to take in the panoramic view of Red Square and the Kremlin, unfortunately blocked off by trucks and uniformed men stood with legs wide apart.

Although I can’t get up close, my 10th-floor room lets me admire the 16th century fairytale cluster of towers of St Basil’s Cathedral — as if painted by a genius with a child’s taste in mixing colour — built by Ivan the Terrible.

Flicking through the international television channels, I learn of Vladimir Putin’s victory followed by the story of the icy tear — reminding me of Margaret Thatcher and the onion-induced sob story.

After breakfast in the 11th-floor club lounge, which includes pastries, herring and potato “Pushkin” (will they one day be called potato “Putin”?), Olga picks me up for some sightseeing.

First, we take a walk to the Armoury Museum, a historic exhibition of royal wealth from the 12th century and part of the Kremlin Palace complex. They take museums seriously here — I have to wear blue plastic bags over my boots to protect the floors.

The excess we hear of today has its roots way back. I walk awestruck from room to room gazing at fur-lined, jewel-encrusted crowns, a chain-mail shirt belonging to Boris Godunov with the phrase “God is with us” inscribed on each link, a 16th century gold and turquoise mace made in Iran, vessels of silver and gold, 19th century ivory and ostrich eggs and a collection of jade Fabergé eggs decorated with the names of the children of Nicolas II.

The tour ends with an exhibition of golden carriages and “liturgical vestments” and coronation clothes such as a 15-kilo dress worn by Alexandra, the wife of Nicolas II, sewn with 10,000 pearls, and tiny pencil-thin shoes worn by Catherine the Great.

We move on to the Assumption Cathedral in Cathedral Square, where the tsars were crowned among curved walls smothered in icons and murals. It is bitterly cold as we exit but I appreciate the chance to look up and enjoy the photogenic bauble-topped churches all around.

As a workman chips ice off a church roof and shards spray dramatically down, a group of women and children hurry across the square, their faces not betraying the cold, unlike mine. Walking to lunch, I pass the faded mustard monolith that is the former KGB headquarters — or Lubyanka, as it is known — on the square of the same name.

Nearby is GlavPivTorg in the former Ministry for Foreign Affairs, a nostalgic glance to the Sixties and Seventies with desks for tables, Abba playing and a Soviet-style menu — salad, watery chicken soup and sponge cake.

I would come to Moscow again, to see its beautiful metro stations, heritage of the socialist regime and its edgy new museums. But for the food? Nyet. In a short time, I’ve seen a lot yet barely scratched the surface. Moscow feels like history in the making. I think about the preserved riches in the Armoury Museum that prove that, for wealthy Muscovites at least, all that glitters really is gold.

DETAILS: MOSCOW

British Airways flies from Heathrow to Moscow, returns from £296; First and Club World service is now featured on the route.

Three nights at the Ritz-Carlton including return BA flights in World Traveller from £719pp room only in May (same package with flight in Club World from £1,589pp), ba.com